I went on Crystal Nicole Fincher’s Hacks and Wonks podcast this week to discuss recent state and local news, including Governor Bob Ferguson’s steadfast refusal to consider wealth taxes on the very richest Washingtonians to help close a $1 billion budget hole; the Seattle City Council’s recent performative vote denouncing the very existence of never-realized proposals, in 2020, to fund alternatives to police; and Councilmember Cathy Moore’s recent decision to halt a competitive bidding process and direct the city to give $1 million to a group called The More We Love to expand its Renton “receiving center” for women escaping the sex trade.
I don’t mean to be alarmist or overstate the impact of Moore’s move, which I covered at length late last month. The result of Moore’s directive (which the mayor’s office agreed to; the Human Services Department is an executive department and it wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t), in the most literal sense, is that a group of Seattle-based organizations that work with commercially exploited sex workers on Aurora Ave. N. will not be able to move forward with the plans they were making to use the money most effectively, and it will go to an untested nonprofit best known for wresting a homeless outreach contract from REACH in Burien instead.
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But there’s something undemocratic about a single official, elected by an 8,600-vote margin in 2023 to represent one of seven City Council districts, deciding that work the city had been directing to help underfunded Seattle nonprofits apply for city funds was no longer necessary, because—according to Moore’s emails to HSD officials—she visited The More We Love’s Renton shelter and found it impressive. There’s also something unseemly about the executive branch agreeing, with few or no questions asked, to halt a competitive bidding process—for funds designed to help some of the most vulnerable people in the city—just because a legislator said so.
All this stuff is technically legal. But at a time when the separation of powers is a joke at the federal level, it’s disturbing to see a legislator discarding the work of organizations that had been going through a competitive that they believed could lead to an expansion of their work, just because she decided she liked one specific group best. These are our tax dollars, and while $1 million isn’t much in the scheme of the city’s budget (especially compared to, say, the half-a-billion dollars we spend on the never-defunded police department), we should have some confidence that they aren’t being spent on a whim.
And City Council president Sara Nelson suggests departing Councilmember Tammy Morales was lying about her own experiences. “This is a positive work environment,” she told KUOW.
1. Edmund Witter, the longtime director of the Housing Justice Project, is leaving HJP to become the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s general counsel—part of a shakeup at the KCRHA under CEO Kelly Kinnison, who became the homelessness agency’s second permanent CEO in June.
In addition to Witter, Kinnison is bringing on Simon Foster as deputy director and Xochitl Maykovich as his associate deputy overseeing strategy. Foster directs the homelessness, housing, and community development division of King County’s Departmhent of Community and Human Services; Maykovich is his chief strategy and operations officer and served as interim deputy director for much of the past year. The new hires appear to be part of a larger reorganization at the agency.
KCRHA did not respond to a request for an interview with Kinnison.
The Housing Justice Project, a project of the King County Bar Association, provides free legal counsel to tenants facing eviction, who have had the right to an attorney in Seattle since 2021.
Instead of fighting evictions in the courts, Witter said, he’ll be “working on the other side of the equation to help make sure those programs [for people experiencing homelessness] work.”
In the past few months, as evictions have risen and the number of people seeking attorneys has exploded, HJP has been overwhelmed, Witter said. “The court is hearing about 800 cases a month, and we’re [only] contracted to do about 200 cases a month,” Witter said. “In October, we had 608 households who applied for our services and qualified for an attorney, and we were only about to carry about 160 of those” cases.
Instead of providing attorneys for each person, HJP has been “unbundling” its services to provide at least some help to as many people as possible, but “tenants are appearing pro se”—acting as their own attorneys—”in front of judges now. The numbers are as bad as we’ve seen in 20 years, certainly since 2008,” the first year of the Great Recession.
Even compared to the HJP, the regional homelessness authority is hardly an oasis of calm. The agency’s first several years were a period of frequent upheaval marked by unforced errors, abandoned and unsuccessful initiatives, and financial debacles. In the year after the agency’s first CEO, Marc Dones, left, the KCRHA had three interim directors. Now, Kinnison seems eager to overhaul and reorganize the agency.
Witter says he’s hoping to help the KCRHA streamline and improve its contracts with the nonprofits that do the work of addressing homelessness across King County. Many of these groups have complained in the past about late payments that force them to go into debt, dip into reserves, or scale back programs while they wait for funding.
The KCRHA, Witter noted, has “not had a general counsel, ever” in four years of operations, which is practically unheard-of for such a large government entity. “It’s a $253 million organization with tons of compliance” requirements that will likely become more complicated under Trump, Witter said. “Not to mention all the other government issues they have to deal with, [like] open meetings and public records.”
HJP’s Spokane County managing attorney, Renee Ballou, will take over Witter’s job on an interim basis while the group looks for a permanent replacement, Witter said.
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2. Governor-elect (and state Attorney General) Bob Ferguson is considering State Sen. Joe Nguyen (D-34, West Seattle and Vashon) for director of the state Department of Commerce, whose wide portfolio includes affordable housing, energy and climate investments, broadband, gun violence prevention, and local economic development. Nguyen confirmed that he is “under consideration,” but did not know when Ferguson planned to make his decision or announce his pick.
If it is Nguyen, Ferguson will have to act fast. The next legislative session starts on January 13, and the 34th District Democrats and the King County Council will have to appoint a successor, a process that takes weeks.
Commerce director Mike Fong, appointed by Gov. Jay Inslee in 2023, will become Snohomish County’s director of economic development. The role is similar to the one Fong held before his stint at the Commerce Department, when he was Snohomish County’s chief recovery and resilience officer. Prior to that, Fong was a longtime city staffer who rose to the position of senior deputy mayor under Jenny Durkan.
Ferguson has brought over most of his senior staff from the Attorney General’s Office. His transition office said they had no information to share yet on the appointment.
3. After City Councilmember Tammy Morales announced she’s stepping down because of what she described as bullying and undermining by her colleagues, KUOW—like many outlets—interviewed Morales about her decision. Then they gave one of the people Morales has accused of fostering a toxic workplace environment, Council President Sara Nelson, almost 15 minutes of air time to say Morales was lying.
“I’m frankly shocked and disappointed with the way she has characterized the dynamic on council and what occurs at the dais,” Nelson told KUOW’s Soundside. Morales, Nelson suggested, was just lashing out because she hasn’t done the work of convincing colleagues to support her proposals. “It’s our responsibility to work with our colleagues on our own time and try to build support for our legislative priorities,” Nelson said.
Nelson, who campaigned for Morales’ 2023 opponent Tanya Woo and oversaw her appointment to a citywide council seat after she lost to Morales, thanked KUOW on X for “the opportunity to set the record straight” about her colleague’s experience of working with Nelson and the rest of the council, who Morales also accused of gaslighting—treating her as if she was imagining her own experience. “This is a positive work environment,” Nelson insisted.
She wasn’t quite done shading Morales. On the city’s website seeking applications to fill Morales’ seat, the link in “Tammy Morales (District 2) resigned her seat” goes not to Morales’ resignation announcement but to Nelson’s own terse statement about Morales’ departure.
(Update: The link to Nelson’s statement has been removed as of late Tuesday morning.)
In addition to Witter, Kinnison is bringing on Simon Foster as deputy director and Xochitl Maykovich as his associate deputy overseeing strategy. Foster directs the homelessness, housing, and community development division of King County’s Departmhent of Community and Human Services; Maykovich is his chief strategy and operations officer and served as interim deputy director for much of the past year. The new hires appear to be part of a larger reorganization at the agency.